Anyways, just thought I'd share some of what my group talked about on Sunday. Basically 2 things: Jesus our atoning sacrifice, and Faith/works.
1. Jesus our atoning sacrifice/propitiation for our sins.
1 My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
Definition of 'propitiation' = the act by which God becomes appeased by our offering of sacrifice.
Propitiation is something that is seen commonly in pagan worship, and in the OT, when animals were sacrificed by men to atone for their sins. But in the Christian context, it is a tad different because not only is God the object of the propitiation (the one to be appeased), but God is also the origin of the sacrifice.In other words, God initiated the sacrifice by sacrificing Himself (or His Son, rather the same thing) to appease Himself.
So then, Jo asked, if He is the origin and the object, then why doesn't He just cancel it out or forget it anyways? Sounds quite boliao right, its like being angry, and thne buying something to appease my anger. I might as well not be angry and forget the whole incident in the first place!
Here, we need to understand the holiness of God. God's wrath, or anger, is a function of His holiness. He is so perfectly holy, that when He sees sin, His just, and morally perfect nature requires of Him to condemn that sin to death.
At this point it would be appropriate to address the phrase, "God loves the sinner but hates the sin.' It is not biblically true! This suggests that God's wrath is "nothing personal". If this stands, then God's love is "nothing personal" as well, because as is mentioned above, His love and wrath cannot be separated from each other. The more I love you, the more hurt or angry I will be when you hurt me. So when we sin, Justice demands our lives, nothing less.
But you see, God loves us so much that He doesn't want us to have to pay for our sin at the cost of our lives! Yes, He died for us before we were born, and we may not even feel that we love Him in the slightest, but as C.S.Lewis writes, His love for us never changes. It "is not wearied by our sins, or our indiffernece, and therefore, quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatevr cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.'
It was necessary that God died for Justice to be done, because none of us created beings are ever going to be a sacrifice worthy enough for Him. In Narnia 1, Azlan came back to life after He was sacrificed for Edmund's 'sin'. He said,
"though the Witch knew the deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that whena willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."
So, only Jesus, who has been tempted in all ways and never been shot by any of the arrows the devil shot at Him (think Matrix!) is able to stand in our place in the court of Justice.
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).
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